Blog

The bylined article is in high demand. Once the province of trade journals, bylined articles are accepted at Forbes, Fortune, Huffington Post and other outlets. We have seen a 10x increase in bylined placements in the past 10 years as publishers go after long tail content at scale.

A bylined article is often ghost written but published under the name of the CEO or other corporate executive. The format should be identical to that of the publication where it is placed. There should not be more than two references to the company behind the bylined: The executive’s name and title at the top of the story and the one sentence bio at the bottom, including one URL to the company site.

The rise in popularity follows two trends: Shrinking newsroom staffs and infinite column inches to fill. The second trend may be the greatest driver. Bylined articles let publishers expand their relevant content pool at scale and take advantage advertising revenue from Google and other markets. In this way bylined articles are a huge opportunity to monetize the long tail.

Corporate authors also benefit. Companies gain the credibility of an article reviewed and approved for posting (rather than a blog post), the brand benefit of the publisher (Forbes, for example) and SEO benefits. Search rank rises with inbound links from authoritative sources and inbound traffic. Also companies can control the message, which is hard to do with PR when an editor interviews your executive.

Bylined articles marry PR and content marketing strategies. They’ve often been recognized as the PR gift that keeps on giving. It turns out they keep giving to content marketers, too.